Policy for Ireland
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-02-17Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 12 →
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SOCIALIST Organiser no.116 continues the discussion on the relevance of Trotskyist ideas in an Irish context. Permanent revolution has never been something in the revolutionary cookbook for which the peasantry was the main ingredient, bur a means of looking at how 1o make a revolution in countries where capitalism had thoroughly distorted any 'natural or 'national' economic development.
Trotsky, unlike John O'Mahony, ruled out any purely democratic programme for dealing sith questions of national independence, saying instead that vu needed a socialist programme that fought national rulers at the same time as foreign ones.
Is this not applicable to Southern Ireland today? Surely shen the Fitzgerald government is doing its best to carry our the kind of austerity offensive that other European governments have; is doing a deal with the British over "condominium" status which would exclude any independence that the Snuth has left; putting anti-abortion laws into the constiraion and being dragged into the NATO alliance, it is more than contirmed. Is it really just phrasemongenng to suggest vou need a socialist programme io deal with these issues?
Ireland is not an advanced capitalist country, but one dominated in every aspect of economic and political life by imperialism:
The big problem for the irish sarking class is not the fears of Prorestants of clerical rraction, which threatens all workers, but the division of the working class into two separate reactionary states. It is that unity that can be created by a party fighting for a socialist prozramme throughout the 32 counties.
Loyalist workers will only break from their bosses when the working class as a whole looks like it stands a chance of sinning and when the unity of the British ruling class which gives the Unionist bosses their backing is under threat.
These are not the bizarre conclusions of the so-called Trotskyist sects.. This is the only possible way to win in Ireland.
Martin Collins, Levenshuime, Manchester 19 LABOUR Committee on ยก eland: annual general meeting 1983 will be on April 23. Resoludions to in by March 19.